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| Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu (In middle addressing the Press) |
By Editor
#TheNworisaDoctrine
For decades, many Nigerians have grown up with a simple description of January 15, 1966: the Igbo coup. The story is familiar: Igbo military officers overthrew Nigeria's First Republic, killed prominent Northern and Western leaders, and an Igbo officer, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, eventually emerged as Head of State. The anger that followed in the North then became part of the chain of events that eventually led to the Nigerian Civil War.
But what if the story is more complicated than the label suggests? This is not an attempt to excuse the coup. It was an unconstitutional seizure of power, and the killing of political leaders and military officers cannot be justified by whatever grievances the plotters had against Nigeria's political class. But if we genuinely want to understand how Nigeria moved from January 15 to the Civil War, we have to look beyond the label and examine what actually happened.
By January 1966, Nigeria's young democracy was already in serious trouble. The 1964 federal election had been bitterly disputed, while the Western Region had descended into political violence following the controversial 1965 election. Homes were burned, political opponents were attacked and the crisis popularly remembered as “Operation Wetie” demonstrated just how badly the political system was deteriorating. To some young military officers, the politicians appeared incapable of resolving the problems they had created.
Among those who eventually plotted the coup were Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Major Adewale Ademoyega. Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna were Igbo, while Ademoyega was Yoruba. The wider group of officers involved was also not exclusively Igbo. This does not mean ethnicity had nothing to do with how the coup unfolded or how it was later perceived, but it does make the simple description of the operation as an exclusively Igbo conspiracy much harder to sustain.
And then there is the part of the story that many Nigerians may never have heard.
One of the reported intentions of the plotters was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was then serving a prison sentence, and bring him into the new political arrangement. Major Ademoyega's account, as one of the principal planners, contains the Awolowo connection, and other historical accounts have also referred to the plan. This does not mean Awolowo planned or authorised the coup. It means that at least some of the plotters were thinking beyond simply handing Nigeria to an Igbo government.
That raises an important question: if the plotters' intentions were more complicated, how did January 15 become remembered as an “Igbo coup”?
Part of the answer lies in who was killed and what happened afterward.
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria, was killed. Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was killed. Several senior Northern military officers were killed. In the West, Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola was also killed. Yet the coup itself did not completely succeed. The operation in Lagos failed to achieve all its objectives, and Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi survived.
Eventually, Ironsi emerged as Head of State.
Ironsi was Igbo.
Whatever the original intentions of the plotters, this was now the reality Nigerians had to interpret. Imagine how the events looked from the perspective of a Northern Nigerian who had just watched Ahmadu Bello, Balewa and several senior Northern officers murdered, only to see an Igbo military officer emerge at the centre of the new government. To many, the pattern appeared unmistakably ethnic.
The distinction between who planned the coup, who carried out particular killings, who ultimately took power and how the public interpreted the events became almost impossible to maintain. The actions of a relatively small group of military officers increasingly became associated with an entire ethnic group.
Ironsi's subsequent policies made matters even more complicated. His government introduced Decree No. 34, which sought to replace the existing federal structure of the civil service with a unified system. From one perspective, centralisation was an attempt to eliminate the regional divisions that had contributed to Nigeria's political crisis. But coming only months after the deaths of the Northern political leadership, it was interpreted by many Northerners as confirmation of their fears that the North had lost its political power to an Igbo-led central government.
Whether that interpretation was completely fair is another question. But political history is shaped not only by what leaders intend; it is also shaped by what people believe those intentions to be.
On July 29, 1966, Northern military officers launched a counter-coup. Ironsi was killed alongside Lieutenant-Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, the Yoruba military governor of the Western Region who had refused to abandon him. What followed was even more devastating: violence spread against Igbo people and other Eastern Nigerians living in parts of the North. Thousands were killed, families were displaced and people who had spent decades building lives outside their ancestral homes began returning East because they no longer felt safe.
The anger created by the deaths of Northern leaders was understandable as an emotional reaction to an extraordinary political crime. The retaliation against innocent civilians, however, was neither justice nor a legitimate response to the coup.
An Igbo trader in Kano did not kill Ahmadu Bello. An Igbo child born in Kaduna did not overthrow Nigeria's government. An Igbo railway worker did not design the coup. Yet an entire population increasingly became associated with the actions of a relatively small group of military officers.
That was one of the great tragedies of 1966: individual responsibility was replaced by collective blame.
From there, trust between the regions deteriorated rapidly. The massacres and mass displacement deepened the belief in the East that Igbo lives could no longer be guaranteed within Nigeria. Political negotiations failed, the country was restructured into states, and eventually Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the independence of Biafra. On July 6, 1967, the Federal Government began military operations, marking the formal beginning of the Civil War.
Nigeria's Civil War was therefore not born from one event. It emerged from a succession of political failures, killings, fears, retaliations and broken trust.
This is why perhaps we need to be more careful about the history we pass to the next generation. Saying that January 1966 was more complicated than the phrase “Igbo coup” does not mean celebrating the coup or denying the deaths of the Northern and Western leaders. It means refusing to turn the actions of individuals into the guilt of an entire people.
We can condemn the coup without condemning the Igbo. We can remember Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa without justifying the killing of innocent Eastern Nigerians. We can acknowledge the legitimate anger of people who lost their leaders without accepting collective punishment as justice.
The young Nigerians alive today did not choose what their grandparents did in 1966. We cannot change what happened, but we can decide what we inherit from it.
We can inherit the facts without inheriting the hatred.
Perhaps that is the history of January 15 that Nigeria most needs to remember.
Nworisa Michael, Department of History & International Studies Northwest University, Kano. Coordinator of Inter-tribe Community Support Forum. Writes from Nworisamichael1917@gmail.com
#TheNworisaDoctrine is a body of ideas centred on nation-building, civic responsibility, inclusive governance and African self-determination.